News & Events Literary Critic James Wood To Speak at Amherst College Nov. 30

November 11, 2005
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.—Critic James Wood will speak on “Saul Bellow and Herzog” at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 30, in the Cole Assembly Room (Red Room) in Converse Hall at Amherst College. Sponsored by the Amherst College Department of English in conjunction with the class “Novels, Plays, Poems,” this event is free and open to the public.

Wood, who has published extensively on English literature, has been hailed by many as the best literary critic of his generation. He is the author of two books of criticism, The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief (2000) and The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel (2004), and a novel, The Book Against God (2003). His perspective on Bellow is informed by the time the two spent as colleagues teaching at Boston University. Since 1992, Wood has been chief critic for Britain's Guardian, and he has been senior editor of The New Republic since 1996.

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